


I See You Through

by belovedmuerto



Series: An Experiment in Empathy [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU, Gen, psychic!john
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-02
Updated: 2011-08-03
Packaged: 2017-10-22 02:50:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/232937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belovedmuerto/pseuds/belovedmuerto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John has never asked Sherlock about his past, his childhood, the reason he quails in lonely misery almost every time he sees his brother. He’s never needed to.<br/>(This is the intended Part 1 of the series.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the fic I mentioned I was working on in "Rows with Chip-And-PIN Machines" (they happen in the same universe but are separate stories). All my thanks and cookies go to my lovely beta Castiron; you rock.
> 
> The name of the story comes from the Neuroticfish song "You're the Fool" from their album Gelb. I highly recommend you go out and get it and listen to the whole album as that's what I listened to pretty much exclusively as I wrote this and that album is how I feel about this story as well as how I want the story to feel.
> 
> Also, The Bomb is my "John totally could've written this about Sherlock" song. Well, if John were poetically/lyrically inclined.

By the time John manages to drag them both out of the pool, Sherlock is howling. Howling. Howling that echoes in John’s head along with the pain pain pain that Sherlock feels. Sherlock won’t stop, can’t stop, he’s screaming screaming screaming obscenities in three--no, make that four languages. _He speaks Arabic?_ He’s screaming screaming screaming John’s name, begging him to make it stop make it go away make the pain end find me help me don’t leave me.

Sherlock has a compound fracture of the femur. This is the most immediately obvious break, but John knows there are more. He can feel that there are more he can feel everything he has no walls left. He can feel the echoes of Sherlock’s pain on top of his own and he’s pretty sure he’d fucked his own wrist pretty good at some point. John does his best to be gentle as he examines Sherlock; doesn’t look like he’s hit his femoral artery with his broken bone thank god. The bleeding is sluggish but still worrying. Blood belongs on the inside. John does not fancy emergency surgery covered in dust and debris and bits of shattered ceramic and chlorine and dripping wet and shaking and with a possibly shattered left wrist and done with his pocketknife.

Sherlock is still screaming, still begging John not to leave him not to go not to die to make it stop, completely out of his head in pain. He isn’t precisely conscious though; it’s been a while since John has seen something like this, it’s been since Afghanistan when nothing he did no matter how much he tried to soothe them kept the soldiers from the terror of their own missing limbs, their own destroyed bodies and minds. If Sherlock doesn’t pass out soon John is sure they’ll lose him to the pain and never be able to find him again, and John knows that his own concussion is impeding his peculiarity. So he does something completely impossible. He grabs Sherlock’s head and touches their foreheads together and scoops him out of his own brain. John takes everything that is Sherlock and removes it and tucks it up close under his sopping wet cardigan and next to his heart.

The screaming stops all at once. Sherlock’s body goes slack, his head lolling to the side, his pulse thready and frantic but still there. Thank god.

John scrabbles in his pocket for the mobile that Moriarty hadn’t bothered to take from him, but of course it’s water-logged and dead. _Shit. Shitshitshit._

More drastic measures.

John’s Gran had been a telepath; she’s the one who taught John how to understand his own peculiarity, how to wield it and how to shield himself from it when it became overwhelming (which was often). She’d taught him ethics at an age before most children even understood sharing.

She’d also taught him how to make a thought toll like a bell.

She’d explained it to him as she took him through the exercises, her patience infinite and her emotions always level and above all she loved him so much he could always feel it even after he learned to shield himself from people and their emotions. “If you do this with a thought when you most need to, Johnny, somewhere someone like me will be able to hear you. It’s like a beacon when you’re in real trouble. I’ll always be able to hear you as long as I’m around.” (They’d played hide-and-seek that way, until John was good enough that she could find him across half the country when he was a teenager. He is pretty sure she’d have been able to tell him precisely where in Afghanistan he was if he’d tried to think at her after he’d been deployed.)

His Gran isn’t around anymore. And John has never met anyone else with peculiarities like the ones they had, but he figures if anyone is going to have a telepath on payroll, it’ll be Mycroft Holmes. So he slowly forces himself through the steps, forms the thought and makes it into a beacon, a bell, he makes his thought Big Ben and he hasn’t let go of Sherlock’s head and he hopes this will come through in fucking 3D IMAX.

 _MYCROFT. HELP._

John’s vision goes grey around the edges and more pain blossoms, compounds, squares, searing down his spine making his back arch in a bizarre parody of pleasure. _Oh well_ , he thinks softly as he slumps over, _at least I tried. I tried to save us, Sherlock, I hope you appreciate this, you mad buggering git._

Sherlock, of course, doesn’t answer.

\----------

One thing you never forget is the sound of a MedEvac chopper. Perhaps the civilian versions sound a bit different, the rotors perhaps not as deep or as powerful, but the relief is always the same.

John doesn’t fully return to consciousness until they’re trying to separate him and Sherlock. He’s barking orders and cursing at them as they pry his fingers off of Sherlock’s and start loading him onto a gurney. The EMT shining a light in his eyes ignores him as he curses her roundly in a pidgin of Pashto and Dari but nods abruptly and relays to the other EMTs when he switches back to English and rattles off preliminary diagnoses for both himself and Sherlock.

The chopper is black. There are no markings on it whatsoever. If it weren’t for the fact that it’s a chopper it’d probably run silent. There is otherwise no sign of the elder Holmes, but John is grateful that he was heard and they were found. The grey and the pain encroach again as the chopper takes off, and he reaches over and lays his hand over Sherlock’s heart before shutting his eyes and letting it take him.


	2. Chapter 2

John’s wrist is broken clean, for which he’s grateful. His shoulder was dislocated and is stiff as hell and it hurts to breathe because of the cracked ribs but he’s done remarkably well for being blown up.

 Sherlock is in traction and an induced coma because the swelling in his head worries the neurologists. He’s broken twice as many ribs as John and his left arm is fractured in three places. There’s now so much metal in his leg that he’ll never be able to get through airport security without a hassle again, and will quite possibly limp for the rest of his life. The doctors say all the right positive things, but it never reaches their eyes and even if it did John would know that they’re worried. One of them is American, and John’s pretty sure he’s not here because he wants to be.

Wherever _here_ is. It smells like hospital, like death and despair and antiseptic, but it’s no hospital John’s familiar with and it certainly isn’t on any NHS register. No one tries to shoo him away from Sherlock’s side when visiting hours should be over. And the food is good. Well, decent anyway.

John refuses to leave Sherlock’s side, once he can get out of his own bed (which admittedly takes a few days, he blames this on the concussion); they don’t give him much hassle for it, just wheel in another bed from somewhere so he has a place to sleep. He sits and he concentrates and he ignores the few other people he can feel in the hospital, the doctors and the nurses, and he layers hope and calm and love over his friend. Medicine and empathy go together remarkably well, which is why John went into medicine. People heal better when they feel good, and John’s always been good at gently layering healing over mental and physical wounds. He’d planned on going into oncology after his Gran’s death, until he found out that empathy works much better with surgery than with cancer; he’d still spent an inordinate amount of time during his residency at Barts on the cancer ward, making people feel hope and soothing over nausea and tamping down fear and anxiety.

It’s a week before John remembers that he’s got Sherlock still tucked up close to his heart. They’re tapering off the drugs that are keeping him unconscious and John realizes that his friend won’t ever wake up if he’s not put back. John painfully gets up from the chair at Sherlock’s bedside and leans over him. He looks asleep and much younger without his normal scowl of consternation at the idiocy of the human race.

“Sorry,” John whispers. “I forgot. I hope I didn’t bore you.” He presses a chaste kiss to Sherlock’s lips and _puts him back_.

John sighs as he straightens. He doesn’t feel different, precisely, but he feels smaller in his own skin. And his shoulder aches again. And his wrist itches beneath the cast. He collapses back into the chair beside Sherlock’s bed, which is surprisingly comfortable considering it’s in a hospital, and falls promptly into sleep.

\----------

John wakes up from a nap to see Mycroft hovering almost uncertainly over him. John knows he’s been in and out, leaving orders and checking on his brother, because he can feel the emotional residue of it. The American neurologist is terrified of the elder Holmes (which is pretty fucking amazing as god-complexes come standard with neurology specialties) and hates him in equal measure. The nurses avoid him, and even the other patients feel enough to cower when he’s been through. _Ladies and Gentlemen, the Incomparable Mycroft Holmes_ , John thinks with a huff.

“‘Lo, Mycroft.”

“Doctor Watson. How are you feeling?”

“Like shit. You?”

“I’ll do. We need to speak.” 

“So speak.” John shrugs. It hurts. He has no intention of leaving Sherlock’s side. He’s off the pentobarbital and could regain consciousness at any moment. His emotional state is delicate but seems ok thus far. Coma patients are notoriously difficult to keep calm when they’re waking up, and John has dealt with a fair few over the years.

“Not here, John.” Mycroft moves his eyes--his eyes, for crying out loud--and his PA appears from the hallway with a wheelchair. “We’re going for a walk.”

Mycroft is, of course, intractable; he will have his way. John knows this, has known this since the first time he ever met Mycroft. People living under rocks know this. John stares (‘glares’ is probably closer to accurate) at Mycroft for a long moment and knows it isn’t worth trying to talk him out of this, so he heaves himself out of the chair and plonks himself with what he hopes is sufficiently Sherlockian sullenness into the wheelchair.

The ever-nameless PA (John still thinks of her as Anthea) wheels him down the hall behind Mycroft and into an empty room.

‘Who taught you how to project like that?’ she asks him telepathically. It feels weird in his head, her thought separate from his own and _alien_. His Gran’s thoughts had always felt much better to him than this. Or perhaps it’s just that he’s exhausted and recovering from trauma and not used to being around a telepath anymore. Whatever the reason, it gives him goosebumps and he rolls his head to try and dispel how weird it feels.

 _My Gran_ , he thinks in answer, not bothering to go through the steps Gran had taught him. She doesn’t need him to, plucking his thoughts out of his brain with obvious ease. John doesn’t even have the energy to erect any sort of barrier to her intrusion.

‘She must’ve been incredibly talented, if she taught you how to make a thought into a beacon like that. I’m pretty sure every telepath in London heard you. And yet, you’re not telepathic at all.’

She was impressed.

 _Please stop feeling so loud_ , he thinks.

“Sorry,” she replies aloud, not feeling even slightly sorry.

“That will be all, my dear,” Mycroft says, watching the both of them closely. John is sure he’ll have a full report of every thought going through John’s head at the end of whatever this is supposed to be. He doesn’t care. _I don’t fucking care_ , he thinks pointedly, and knows she hears because she chuckles before plucking her Blackberry out of her pocket and leaving the room.

Mycroft simply looks at John for a long time. John simply looks back. He doesn’t have the energy to be intimidated. He doesn’t care. He’s just trying to keep his stupid git of a flatmate alive and sane.

Eventually, Mycroft speaks. “If you weren’t so obviously a basically _good_ man, Doctor Watson, and so obviously good for my wayward younger brother, I do believe I would have you dissected and studied.”

“Fuck off, Mycroft. What do you want?” John sounds almost exactly like Sherlock when he says that, right down to the disdain. It’s like he still has a bit of Sherlock tucked up close and that is just not possible. Right?

He can feel Mycroft’s faint surprise through mental shields that are surprisingly good for someone who doesn’t have any sort of peculiarities himself. However, mental shields never quite entirely shield emotion, and John can still pick up what Mycroft is feeling because his own shields are rubble in his head.

“I’d like to know what you are, John Watson.”  

“I’m a doctor.”

“But that isn’t all.”  

“That’s what’s important. Beside that, you already know.”  

“I’d like you to confirm it for me.” 

John sighs (he’s done that an awful lot since throwing his lot in with Sherlock Holmes). There’s no point in prevaricating when he tipped his hand by doing that thing with his call for help. He doesn’t even want to think about what Mycroft’s other sources might be. “Empath. I’m an empath, Mycroft.”

(He leaves out the other peculiarity. It’s much harder to explain and might erase Mycroft’s benevolence. He doesn’t want to be dissected. Or recruited, for that matter.)

Giving Mycroft a glare that nearly matches Sherlock’s, John projects. Really projects, overriding Mycroft’s will and his real emotions to insert what he wants the man to be feeling; this is different from what he generally uses his peculiarity for. He’s rusty at this, but after a moment, there are tears in Mycroft’s eyes. Another passes, and he’s laughing helplessly, bent over and hanging onto his umbrella to stay standing.

John stops, sighs. He doesn’t like projecting. Not like this, anyway. Adding layers, smoothing things over, taking the edge off, those are different than actual projection. He soothes people, he doesn’t bludgeon them with what he thinks they should be feeling.

Mycroft takes a deep breath, delicately dabs at the tears on his cheek with a handkerchief. “Projective as well as receptive, I see.”

John nods, once.

“Do you make a habit of emotional manipulation, John?”

“You know I don’t, Mycroft.”

“Does my brother know about this ability of yours?”

John shakes his head. How do you tell someone of supreme rationality that you have a completely irrational and inexplicable ability?

“He won’t appreciate it, what you do. Sherlock cannot abide manipulation, John, except when it is his own.”

“I’ve never manipulated him, Mycroft. I’ve never projected on him. I do not project on anyone unless I absolutely have to.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

Mycroft nods, but he doesn’t entirely believe John.

“You don’t believe me.” He receives a sharp look for this. “Emotions aren’t like thoughts, Mycroft. You have surprisingly good mental blocks for someone without psychic ability but unless I try to keep you out I can still feel what you’re feeling. Emotions are never entirely concealed unless they don’t exist.”

Another sharp look from Mycroft, a quirk of the brow, a ruthlessly suppressed stab of hope.

John answers the unasked question, “No, your brother isn’t truly a sociopath. Has he actually been diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder or something? And can I go back to my nap now?”

“Yes,” Mycroft answers John’s first question. It hurts him to admit it.

“Well, they were _wrong_.”

The PA appears from the hallway where she’d been stationed.

“You should tell him, Doctor Watson. Before he figures it out for himself. I cannot fathom his actions if he feels you betrayed him.”

“I will never betray him, Mycroft.”

Even Mycroft can feel the sincerity in that statement, and he is almost entirely without empathy of even the normal sort.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am going to try to get a few more chapters posted today. :)

Sherlock comes to himself softly. He feels safe and loved and warm and comfortable. _Safe._ Safe is good. Not precisely happy, but the worries are vague and half-formed and not worth thinking about right now. There are drugs flowing through his veins instead of blood and he’s pretty sure he’s floating three inches above the bed because it’s way too comfortable to be a hospital bed. There are dreams flitting about just outside his grasp, but he knows they’re warm and woolen and comfortable and safe as well. There is someone there, and they’re hurting; this is what woke him. He opens his eyes and knows he’s in one of his brother’s places (which at least explains the quality of the narcotics and the comfort of the bed). And he knows that it’s John who is hurting, and that makes him hurt. Somewhere way too deep for him to grasp he knows he shouldn’t actually feel the hurt that John is feeling, but the thought is gone before he can do anything with it.

John is with him. John is dreaming. John is having a nightmare, though he gives no outward sign other than a clenched hand. He’s slumped over the bed, the top of his head against Sherlock’s rib, his right arm flung over Sherlock, hand over his heart, clenched into Sherlock’s pajamas.

“John,” Sherlock whispers, “It’s ok. Don’t have nightmares, John. I’m here.” He gives John some of the _safewarmloved_ that are wrapped around him like a blanket, wraps the feelings around both of them, feels when the jumbled scariness in John’s head dissipates and fades away. _Well, that’s weird. Isn’t it? Is it? I’m not really feeling these things, am I? What the hell am I on?_ But even these thoughts float away quickly, whether that’s due to the drugs or the disorientation of waking up he’ll never know.

It takes far more effort than it should, but Sherlock lifts his own arm and lays it over John’s, lacing their fingers together. Then he falls back asleep.

\----------

John is half-asleep in the chair by the window when Mycroft shows up again. He hears the elder Holmes approach his brother and sit on the side of the bed, Sherlock’s good side, most likely. He tries not to move, not to let them know he’s anything other than fully unconscious.

“Fuck off, Mycroft. What do you want?” Sherlock greets his brother, and John flinches at the memory how much he’d sounded like his flatmate when he’d had that conversation with Mycroft. It’s worrisome as he’s naturally incredibly polite even to people he doesn’t particularly care for. It’s worrisome because he’d had his flatmate stored inside him like a tin of beans for a week.

Mycroft merely chuckles. “I think you’re rubbing off on your flatmate, brother. He’s starting to be as cheeky as you.” (John’s heart thumps when those words sink in. _Oooh, **shit**_.) 

Sherlock scoffs, then grunts. Mycroft is hugging him. “Ow! Jesus Mycroft, my ribs. Get off me.”

“You gave us a fright, Sherlock.”

Sherlock merely glares, but John can feel, finally, Sherlock’s relief. He’d been worried on some level about what Mycroft would say when he showed up. Sherlock spends the next few minutes heaping abuse on his brother; Mycroft takes it without a word.

John doesn’t stir until after Mycroft has gone. He’s not sure if they knew he was awake or not. Probably. Most likely. Oh well. He gets up slowly, still stiff; his ribs ache, his shoulder aches, his limp is back and isn’t quite as psychosomatic as it used to be.

Sherlock glares at him when he sits in the spot Mycroft has just vacated. “If you ever tell anyone I let my brother hug me I will poison you in your sleep. And I’ll make it look like suicide.”

John just grins at him. He’s been doing that a lot the past few days, grinning at Sherlock. Ever since Sherlock opened his eyes and looked up at John, John’s been grinning at him. Except when he’s not. Except when Sherlock is being miserable to everyone around him, then he just does his best not to get swamped in it.

“Are you going to eat today, Sherlock? Or do I need to resort to force feeding you? I could do it, you know.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

Sherlock hates being in traction and he hates being in hospital and he hates the drugs that make his mind a muddle (except when they make him too high to care) and he cannot stand having nothing to do. The food is rubbish and he generally refuses to eat it, no matter how much John cajoles. He makes the nurses miserable, he makes John miserable, he makes himself miserable. John cannot even manage to get through Sherlock’s misery to help him feel better; it’s like molasses filling the room, making everything slow and quiet and sad.

All in all, it’s a typical hospital stay for Sherlock Holmes. Unfortunately this one is going to last longer than usual, no matter how much Sherlock rails against the injustice of it.

\----------

“John. John, John. John would you please wake up. John for the love of god I can’t get up and wake you, would you wake the hell up already? John. JOHN!”

John startles awake. Still in the hospital. In the other bed in Sherlock’s room. Uncomfortable. Sweating, heart racing. Another nightmare, then. “I’m awake, Sherlock,” he croaks.

“Thank Christ, your nightmares are horrendous. Come here, please.”

 _Did Sherlock just say please? Wait, my nightmares?_ “Was I loud? Sorry.” John slowly gets to his feet and pads to Sherlock’s side. “What?”

“Get in.” Sherlock indicates the approximately six inches of free space next to him in the bed, pulls back the covers.

“Are you having me on?” John rubs his hands over his face. “It’s the middle of the night, Sherlock--”

Sherlock grabs John’s arm and starts tugging at him; half-asleep, his heart still racing and the nightmare lingering, John doesn’t fight him.

“I can’t keep your stupid nightmares from coming back if you’re all the way across the room.” Sherlock says this as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. The same way he says just about everything.

“Fine, whatever.” John tries to lay with his back against Sherlock but it makes his already stiff left shoulder hurt, so with a huff he turns over to his right side. “This is ridiculous.” He drapes his arm across Sherlock’s stomach, careful not to hit his ribs.

“Go back to sleep, John.” Sherlock puts his own good arm around John and snuggles--actually snuggles--closer to him, as much as the traction will allow. If John weren’t already so preoccupied with the weirdness of the situation that would’ve tipped him right over the edge.

They’re both asleep in minutes.


	4. Chapter 4

As it turns out, and neither of them quite realize until Sherlock is finally released into John’s care, Mycroft had them disappeared after the Incident at the pool (Sherlock will blame this glaring mistake on the drugs; they’re very good drugs, you see). John is very nearly grateful for it though, because dealing with Sherlock in hospital is bad enough, dealing with Sherlock in hospital after visits from the people he pretends not to notice care about him would be a nightmare. No one had any idea where they were and the Yard had all but closed the case on them as literally blown to bits.

Sherlock actually deigns to call his brother to shout at him for that, instead of texting his invective. John very nearly has to physically restrain him, although the crutches and the limp help in his favor. When Mycroft attempts to explain himself, Sherlock hangs up on him and then hurls his brand new phone (Mycroft had given them both new phones on the ride home from the hospital, as both of theirs had died a chlorinated death) across the lounge, where it shatters against the wall.

 _Wonderful_ , John thinks. _I hope Mycroft brings him another new phone because he’s not getting mine. Well, not any more than usual anyway._

Mrs Hudson alternates between yelling at them both and crying for two hours before John is able to calm her sufficiently to get her out of the flat so he can get Sherlock settled in. When she finally starts back downstairs, she assures them she’s going to do them a nice tea, even though she still isn’t their housekeeper. John wonders briefly what Mycroft told her, if they’ve been gone for so long and she hasn’t had the flat cleared out to be re-let, before turning his attention back to Sherlock, the great annoying git, who is now regretting destroying his phone (John would be able to deduce this even without empathy).

Lestrade shows up half an hour later and gives John a relieved hug. He brings beer. John cracks one and chugs it in four long gulps while Lestrade looks on in disbelief. John just tosses a look Sherlock’s way in answer. The beer doesn’t help with John’s continuing inability to reconstruct his shields against other people, but it does help to make everything just the tiniest bit fuzzy. John does his best to reassure the worried DI that they’re mostly fine and hadn’t been abducted. He’s going to have to get a debriefing from Mycroft before he says anything further, because he likes Lestrade and doesn’t want to be dishonest with him.

Sherlock lies in state on the couch, glaring at all that he surveys, sinking quickly into what looks like it’s going to be an _epic_ strop.

Mycroft shows up later that evening with a manila envelope and a smallish gift box tied with ribbon. He hands the box to John with a quiet “The proper welcome home gift will be over tomorrow,” and goes to crowd into Sherlock’s personal space; Sherlock at this point has gone nuclear and refuses to even look at Mycroft. Even Mrs Hudson had taken one look at him when she brought up the tea, given John a look of profound sympathy, and fled again.

Mycroft is feeling particularly smug. This should be a warning, but neither John nor Sherlock are at their best right now.

John takes the ribbon off the box and lifts the lid. Inside is another box, wooden. John touches, tentatively. And promptly drops it. Thankfully, the box has a sound latch and a lock, so it doesn’t burst and spill its contents all over their lounge.

Sherlock is watching him, a slight widening of his eyes his only reaction. He takes the envelope from Mycroft and opens it.

\----------

Sherlock does not want Mycroft in their flat when they’ve only just arrived home. He just wants... he doesn’t know what he wants. Quiet, perhaps. For everyone (except John) to leave him alone, definitely. It’s been an exhausting afternoon, he’s bored already and Mrs Hudson started grating on his nerves about five seconds after she started blubbering over them. His leg hurts, his arm aches, and John is not going to give him any of the drugs they brought home for hours yet.

Annoyed he recognizes. Annoyed he’s used to, and is used to _using_. The rest of it, not so much.

Mycroft hands John a small box tied with a ribbon, then shoves a manila envelope in Sherlock’s face. Sherlock knows he feels even more smug than usual, and this is not a good sign. He ignores his brother and watches with narrowed eyes as John unties the ribbon and opens the box. He can read John’s hesitance in every line of his body so well he _feels_ it.

Then John touches the box and Sherlock nearly startles out of his own skin at John’s reaction. It felt as though he’d been the one to feel that, and that simply isn’t right. That makes no logical or rational sense.

That isn’t possible.

John drops the box immediately upon touching it and Sherlock feels his eyes widen. Reluctantly he turns his gaze to the envelope still practically poking him in the eye and snatches it out of Mycroft’s fat, stupid hand. With a glare, he opens it even though he already knows what’s inside and that _really_ isn’t at all possible.

Inside is a single photo, black and white, of Moriarty, with a single bullet hole directly between his eyes. It matches the image already in Sherlock’s head. There’s a newspaper on the dead madman’s chest giving the date as three days ago. Sherlock rips the picture into tiny little pieces and throws them at Mycroft, glaring all the while, too mad to even speak.

John’s eyes are haunted when Sherlock looks at him again, and Sherlock feels a strange urge to hug him. Mycroft beats a hasty retreat, having shown his hand; he barely even gloats. Sherlock allows John to cajole him with tea and narcotic painkillers and to put him to bed, because his head is too full and everything is overwhelming and hopefully the drugs will make it _quiet_.


	5. Chapter 5

It takes a few days of getting used to being back in their flat; they’d been in hospital for almost two months. All of Sherlock’s experiments are ruined, including the ones John isn’t supposed to know about. He’s _already_ refusing to do his physio and it’s driving John up a wall. John’s irritation is infectious, or perhaps it is Sherlock that infects John. The refrigerator is very nearly a bio-hazard and John throws everything away no matter how loudly Sherlock protests (he’s stuck on the sofa in the lounge so he can’t really _do_ anything about it). The flat smells musty until John leaves the windows open for an entire chilly afternoon. Sherlock complains incessantly until John ends up getting the comforter off his own bed and sitting down next to his dramatically shivering flatmate and covering both of them with it. Sherlock promptly snakes his arms about John’s torso, pillows his head on John’s shoulder and falls asleep. After that, John can’t manage to work up enough energy to care about all the chores he means to do, so he takes a nap as well.

It takes a few more days before John fully realizes that he can’t shut Sherlock out anymore. It’s always been rather difficult; Sherlock’s emotions are much like the rest of him: over-dramatic and very insistent (even if the man is spectacularly, incredibly talented at ignoring his own feelings), and John’s never gotten any better at ignoring any of Sherlock, but this isn’t a matter of his mental walls being in rubble. It hits him fully in the face when he’s getting out of bed one morning, and he curses under his breath for a full five minutes. This is what he’s been resisting since Sherlock woke up in hospital. This is what he’s been in denial about, and oh boy is he fucked.

It takes a few more days ( _worryworryworry_ ) before John realizes that Sherlock isn’t just getting the normal deductions from John as well, when John mutters over the toast one morning and Sherlock mentions something about his mum’s favorite jam. Not Sherlock’s mum, John’s mum. There’s absolutely no way Sherlock could figure that out just by looking at John. Oh bloody buggering _fuck_.

John waits. He waits and he wonders and he worries. Is it going to fade away? He doesn’t even know how it happened ( _not true_ , his brain whispers, even after he tells it to shut up). Surely it’ll go away on its own? Perhaps Sherlock won’t notice? He pretends so hard not to _feel_ things the way most people do, maybe he’ll just brush this off as irrelevant.

John has never asked Sherlock about his past, his childhood, the reason he quails in lonely misery almost every time he sees his brother. He’s never needed to. John has known one or two brilliant people before (though none to hold a candle to Sherlock), and he knows that the brilliant ones tend to feel things far more deeply than one’s average everyday idiot; Sherlock is no exception to that rule and may in fact be proof positive of it.

John knew that moving in with a new person would cause his peculiarities to act up; usually it’s only a few weeks before he’s able to shield from the new person as well as if he’d just met them on the street. (It was worst in Afghanistan. He’d never hated either of his peculiarities before then.)

He’d gotten better, marginally, before all this; he’d started to get a feel for Sherlock’s patterns, his rhythms. It had been helpful that though Sherlock had emotions, he rarely actually emoted. Now though. Now he gets random flashes of Sherlock as a child, of the woman who must be his mother, of Mycroft as a petulant teen (and that’s enough to weird him out beyond the telling for an entire afternoon), and that simply _shouldn’t happen_ with or without mental blocks in place. It’s never been like this before, he’s never gotten information about a person without his sense of touch being involved, but then he’s never scooped someone out of their own head and hung on to them for a week before putting them back into their own body ( _see what you did_ , his brain whispers, _this is all your fault_ ).

The only other people he’d ever had trouble shutting out were his Gran and Harry, and they're the two most important people in his life despite his issues with Harry and the fact that they’d never quite got on. And even Harry he was able to learn to filter out once they got older; he was able to hug her these days without knowing every row she’d had with Clara in an instant. He still almost always knows what she’s feeling when he sees her, but that is easier to deal with, and avoidance goes an awful long way to help as well. Not so with Sherlock. No matter how high he builds the walls Sherlock is always inside them, and they always crumble away like stale bread when he realizes. He can always feel what Sherlock’s feeling, and he keeps getting those flashes of history even without any touch.

 It’s worse when they happen to touch. Which seems to be more often since Sherlock’s release from the hospital. Sherlock doesn’t even seem conscious of it, of his need for reassurance. And it makes John hurt in more ways than one.

So he waits. He waits and he wonders and he hopes that it fades and that the headaches are just him and not Sherlock as well and he dreads what’s coming. And for all the tea in England he cannot figure out a way to bring the subject up before the inevitable happens.

\----------

Sherlock spends a lot of time analyzing his newfound need for reassurance that John is still there. Still present. Still alive. Not going to _leave_ him (and how _does_ one put that sort of sentiment into words, precisely).

It’s a disconcerting need, but Sherlock has never been one to deny himself much of anything that makes him feel good. In that way he is a classic hedonist. Except he doesn’t always like what happens when he touches John. Often, John will stiffen: a nearly imperceptible tightening of his trapezoid muscles if Sherlock lays a hand on his shoulder; his rhomboids seize if Sherlock puts his hand in between John’s shoulder blades; and the one time Sherlock touches John’s neck both of his levators scapulae start to twitch. John always makes a conscious and nearly immediate effort to relax himself, but Sherlock always notices. This is not the sort of reaction one wants a person to have when one seeks reassurance from them, but Sherlock cannot figure out how to make John stop.

The worst of it isn’t John’s reaction though. The worst is the rush of images and the physical reaction that seems to hit Sherlock every time he does it. And Sherlock doesn’t know what to do with these reactions because they don’t fit. John is... John. Flatmate. Friend. Blogger ( _ridiculous_ ). John is both just like everyone else and completely different from anyone Sherlock has ever met. John is fascinating, like a brand new toy or a complex puzzle. There is no evidence that would support any sort of hypothesis involving a withdrawal of John’s affection, and Sherlock has never observed John to be one to be reticent of touch; he isn’t one to go out of his way to seek it, but he doesn’t avoid it either. People seem to like to touch John, in fact.

So Sherlock sets about cataloging these varied reactions. Often there is a flutter in his stomach which he believes may be worry. But worry about what? He’s nothing to be worried about, apparently, since stupid Mycroft took care of Moriarty. No one else will ever pose that sort of challenge and Sherlock frankly hates Mycroft more than usual for taking that away from him (he often gets distracted by apprehension (yes, ok, but why?) and anger when he starts thinking along these lines, however; it takes him a while to get back to his original trail of thought).

The images he dismisses as flights of fancy nearly immediately. He’s always had both a vivid and an active imagination, it’s part of his genius--there have always been moments of what anyone else would call divine inspiration and though these new images ( _soundseventsfeelingsallinarush_ ) always seem to involve John, Sherlock is able to easily dismiss them.

Sherlock comes to no immediate conclusions.

\----------

Mycroft’s ‘welcome home’ present does indeed arrive the next afternoon. It consists of a gift basket full of tea (John’s favorite), exotic honey that John would love to eat with a spoon (sourwood, imported from Georgia), various non-perishable comestibles (all of John’s favorites and he suspects most of Sherlock’s as well) and _another_ new Blackberry for Sherlock. There’s a note attached to the phone’s box that says: “Don’t worry, my dear brother, the number is the same. Try not to throw a tantrum and destroy this one, please. MH”

Sherlock very nearly does so immediately.


	6. Chapter 6

John startles out of his normal nightmare at an unholy screech from Sherlock’s violin. He rolls over and winces at the continuing twinges of pain in his shoulder. Then he glances at the clock. It’s not even four in the morning and how the fuck did Sherlock even get his hands on his violin?

His phone is on the dresser, and it is glowing. He’d forgotten to turn the ringer back on before collapsing into bed barely three hours ago (it’s far more complex than the phone Harry had given him, he’s still learning what all the buttons do).

It’s a few minutes before the fuzziness and the adrenaline of the nightmare fades and he slowly shuffles across the room, making sure to shuffle _really hard_ so that Sherlock will know he’s up and stop plucking at that infernal instrument.

He has twenty seven new text messages. They are all from Sherlock. John picks up the phone and reads through them as he shuffles back to his bed.

 _John._

 _John_

 _John_

 _John._

 _JOhn_

 _JOHN._

 _JoHN?_

 _John, wake up._

 _John wake up now._

 _Are you up yet?_

 _Why aren’t you answering me?_

 _John. Please?_

 _I will not beg._

 _You complete bastard, you left your phone on silent when you went to bed, didn’t you?_

 _Wake up._

 _Wake up._

 _Wake up._

 _Wake up._

 _Wake up._

 _Wake up._

 _Wake up._

 _Wake up._

 _Wake up._

 _Please wake up?_

 _How do you even sleep through that?_

 _JOHN HAMISH WATSON YOU ARE A TERRIBLE CARETAKER AND HUMAN BEING._

 _please wake up._

He hadn’t even bothered to sign any of the texts, a sign of great distress to John. He replies to the last one: _What?_

The violin, which had gone from screeching to crooning when John started shuffling across the room, stops. Finally.

 _I need you to come here_ , is the reply he gets almost immediately.

 _Why?_ John sends back, rubbing his face with his free hand.

 _Because I cannot come up there, obviously._

 _What for?_

 _I need help._

John wonders briefly if it would be too childish of him to simply go to the top of the steps and bellow “WITH WHAT?” in the general direction of Sherlock. Instead he shuffles slowly downstairs and into Sherlock’s room.

Sherlock has scooted to the far side of his for once cleared off bed. He’d insisted upon supervising while John carefully cleared the months of detritus, even though standing that long had exhausted him more than he admitted to. On the other hand, he’d eaten dinner without complaint because of the exhaustion.

He’s thrown the covers back and has his arms crossed.

Sherlock feels... nervous. That’s a new one. John stands in the door for a moment and then realizes that he’d likely woken Sherlock up with his nightmares again; Sherlock isn’t any more awake than John himself is. _Sherlock hates my nightmares. I really shouldn’t find this endearing. I should find this worrying. I do, but it’s too late to deal with right now._

So instead of being annoyed and making a sarcastic comment, he derails the entire fight Sherlock is clearly already getting himself into a strop about. He doesn’t ask why Sherlock had insisted he come downstairs or why he’d claimed to need help. He crosses from the door to the bed and slips under the covers and pulls them up to his neck, curling up on his right side.

“C’mon, go back sleep Sh’lock,” he slurs, poking Sherlock just under the ribs.

For a long moment, Sherlock just stares at him in shock. He doesn’t say anything though, just scoots back down under the covers himself and turns onto his right side. John scoots closer and drapes an arm over his flatmate.

“Play me something pretty in the morning, kay?” John murmurs. Or perhaps he just thinks it. If Sherlock answers, he doesn’t hear it, as John is already asleep.

\----------

Due in large part to the varied and many drugs that Sherlock is still on and that John is making sure he takes (and will continue to do even if it means force-feeding Sherlock), their sleep patterns haven’t evened out into anything approaching regular yet. Likely Sherlock’s never will, but he’s been sleeping a lot, relatively long naps scattered throughout the day and night. John tries to catch sleep whenever Sherlock passes out, but he never goes far because he doesn’t want to let his flatmate out of his sight, and he definitely doesn’t want to think about why that is. They’re awful, erratic hours and John hates it but he adjusts; it isn’t like he hasn’t had to do that before, in Afghanistan and earlier during his residency.

John wakes up on the couch, his back sore. The couch always makes his back sore, but Sherlock was asleep in his bed so it’s not like John could kip there.

John’s just sitting up and stretching his creaking back when he hears a strangled sound coming from the direction of Sherlock’s room. “Sherlock?” he calls, but there’s no answer. So he goes to investigate.

Sherlock is twisted in the sheets of his bed, frowning for all he’s worth, thrashing in the throes of a nightmare. Now that he’s fully awake, John realizes this must be what woke him.

Sherlock is terrified; it washes through John leaving goosebumps all over in its wake.

“Sherlock,” John says again, hoping to snap the man out of his dream. But dreams don’t always work like that (and John will learn that Sherlock’s never do), and all Sherlock does in reply is wail. He’s crying, still thrashing, still terrified.

“Sherlock!” John reaches out to shake Sherlock and is rewarded with a flailing fist to the mouth. John tastes blood and curses.

“SHERLOCK!” he shouts, but even that doesn’t wake him. Sherlock quails at his voice, wailing again, a long and drawn out “No!” Still cowering, Sherlock rolls onto his side, whimpering, and curls into a tight ball.

 _Jesus, this is horrid_ , John thinks. He wonders if his own nightmares do this to Sherlock and blames himself. He can’t tell what Sherlock is dreaming about (even with the clairsentience dreams are funny things that can rarely be shared and Gran had warned him against it), but he can feel that it’s about despair and loss. It’s horrible.

Sherlock is murmuring miserably to himself, the gibberish of dreams, but John distinctly hears his own name repeatedly, as well as the word no. Oh this is just too much, even John wants to cry at this point Sherlock is so clearly miserable. Without thinking about it, John climbs into the bed with Sherlock, taking only long enough to shed his jumper. He lies next to Sherlock and tries to stay calm; calm should help since nothing else seems to be getting through to Sherlock and John is hesitant to outright project on him. He’s never projected on a dreaming person; he doesn’t know what it’ll do.

It seems to take forever, but his presence eventually calms Sherlock enough that he turns and clings to John, snuffling at his neck and settling into deeper sleep.

 _Thank god_ , John thinks, feeling at the cut on his lip with his tongue; he doesn’t think it’s bad enough that he needs to address it immediately, though he can taste coppery blood as it runs down his throat. He lies quietly with his arms around Sherlock and lets his mind wander. He won’t be getting back to sleep any time soon, that’s for sure. With long discipline born of med school and the army, he turns his thoughts to soothing things, hoping that it filters through and keeps Sherlock’s dreams from returning.

\----------

“John?”

“Mrmmf?” John opens his eyes slowly, looks at Sherlock looking at him over his shoulder.

“Why is your face covered in blood?”

“Because you punched me in your sleep, wanker.” Somehow John almost makes it sound like an affectionate term, even still sort of asleep.

“I hit you?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” Sherlock vaguely remembers his nightmare. “Sorry.”

\----------

Sherlock is still blaming the drugs for his addled mind. But he’s finally eliminated everything except the impossible, so clearly it isn’t as impossible as he’d thought. Ridiculous, of course. _Utterly_ preposterous. But apparently not impossible. John has infected him with emotions. With John’s emotions, to be exact.

He can always tell what John is feeling, and it’s _horrible_. The headaches are the worst.

No, the fact that no matter what he does he can’t get John’s _feelings_ out of his head, that’s the worst. Emotions are impractical and they make no _sense_ and they’re impossible to deduce and they rule the world for most people but most people are bloody _idiots_. John’s awful nightmares have woken him up at least three nights in the past week (and they’re truly awful, full of pain and fear and clawing panic that wake him in cold sweats even as they keep John thrashing in their grip); this doesn’t even count the number of times it happened while they were still in hospital. Because it definitely happened while they were in hospital too; he’d just been too high on painkillers most of the time to realize that all the things he seemed to just know weren’t because of his usual deductions. _Bloody hell, what did John do to me? What has John been doing to me since we met?_

(It’s only fair that his own nightmares have woken John up at least twice that week. If there’s a competition, clearly he’s winning because-- _well, who cares why? I’m winning, clearly._ )

But the worry. Now it makes sense. John has known, known since they returned home to Baker Street, possibly before, that he’d done this to Sherlock. The real question isn’t even how, but _why_?


	7. Chapter 7

It happens the next Tuesday, in the afternoon. John stretches to reach for the tea in the cupboard, worrying like he always is now and it won’t stop and it’s driving Sherlock absolutely mad and Sherlock snaps.

“What did you do, John? What did you do what did you do _whatdidyoudo_?”

John turns slowly to face Sherlock, who is standing entirely too close for comfort (this is where Sherlock is normally standing, but he isn’t usually clutching his head like it’s about to explode or staring at John with mad eyes).

“WHAT DID YOU DO, JOHN?” Sherlock yells, and transfers his grip from his own head to John’s. This is a mistake, as his brain is immediately assaulted not only with all the guilt and pain and worry and bloody awful love that John feels for him but also with John’s entire life.

Sherlock is rarely wrong when he makes a deduction. But he forgets sometimes, that sometimes he misses things, such as the fact that John hasn’t only infected him with empathy but also with John’s other less easy to name peculiarity. The one that lets John suck up information about the people who’ve used the chip-and-PIN machine before him or lets him see exactly how Mycroft had Moriarty killed running blind in terror of the Holmes he’d underestimated with only a touch of the box containing his ashes. The one that he’d dismissed entirely as his own imagination, _stupid, stupid_.

For three minutes that feel far longer, they’re caught in a feedback loop. John can feel everything that Sherlock feels with far more immediacy than usual and he watches his flatmate’s entire life parade before his eyes; he knows somewhere underneath it all that Sherlock hadn’t thought this would happen, hadn’t figured out the clairsentience or had discounted it, and is caught up in the spiral with him. And that this terrifies Sherlock.

Finally, finally he wrenches free of Sherlock’s death grip, because he knows that Sherlock is far too overwhelmed to be able to force his muscles to move at all. John tries to back up a step and hits the counter, leans against it, breathing heavily, his head pounding with the overflow of emotion. Too much information takes on a whole new meaning when one is peculiar the way John is.

Sherlock is still standing too close, his own breathing erratic, incapable of moving, even more overwhelmed than John. He hasn’t had years of practice dealing with the emotions of everyone around him, he’s never had to brace himself against the touch of another person, he never had to learn how to not flinch whenever someone casually touched him, he never even learned how to deal with his own emotions. John can feel each harsh exhale, he can practically see the maelstrom going on in Sherlock’s remarkable brain. _I’m so sorry_.

John knows when the anger clicks on and cannot help but feel his own rising in answer. Of course Sherlock goes straight for outrage, it’s much easier than _feeling_ , isn’t it?

John holds up a hand to forestall the tirade he knows is coming. Sherlock is flabbergasted enough to remain silent. After a moment John replaces it with, “Don’t, Sherlock. Not right now.” Sherlock watches in shock as John cracks, his anger building as he murmurs to himself. “What did I do? Only kept you from killing yourself out of boredom, oh, what did I do? Only moved in with you and killed a man for you and tried to keep people from making you hurt more than you already did. Only got kidnapped yet again by a fucking psychopathic genius and strapped with bombs all because you said you’d get milk and beans. Oh, what did I do? Only tried to keep you going absolutely fucking insane from the pain. I didn’t do _anything_ , silly John Watson the pet, Sherlock’s _dog_ , you’re the one who agreed to meet him at a deserted fucking swimming pool and got us both nearly killed.”

“This is your fault.” Sherlock interrupts, voice flat, emotionless. His tone gives away nothing of the maelstrom of hurt and wonder and amazement and fear and guilt warring inside him.

“Yes, my fault,” John answers softly. Too softly, because it is and he knows it but it hurts that Sherlock blames him as much as he blames himself, and his anger is turning outwards at this point and they both know it.

Sherlock, the great git, does his best to ignore what he knows John is feeling. He’s never been able to rely on emotion before, he’s not about to start now and besides he isn’t good at interpreting emotion. He’s really quite terrible at social cues that should be screaming at him to step back, to go running for the hills because a truly angry John Watson isn’t someone he wants to confront, especially not a truly angry John Watson who is an empath. There is a typhoon whirling in his head and he can’t keep a single rational thought above the waves and waves of awful emotion and oh dear lord is John mad and everything _hurts_.

“My fault I saved your fucking life,” John adds, voice going even softer as his anger grows, because anger is far cleaner and brighter and easier than _hurt_. “My fault I did something _impossible_ and stopped you screaming your head off and going walkabout permanently because of the pain you were in.”

Sherlock watches as John _looms_ , which should be impossible considering their height difference. For once, his expressive face doesn’t give Sherlock a single clue as to what he’s about to say or do; Sherlock will not acknowledge anything beyond what he can see enough for it to inform him, and he is single-minded in his willful ignorance. He will not drown in it, he will not let himself.

“Do you know what people do when they’re in that much pain, Sherlock?” John’s tone is nearly conversational, and that is terrifying. He doesn’t give Sherlock time to answer.

“They go insane. Really insane. Not fun insane like you usually are. And they don’t come back; there’s only so much pain your brain can forget before it gives up and never feels anything else. Should I have let you do that?”

Sherlock is speechless. He is drowning in John’s anger, it has completely overwhelmed him and he can’t keep his head above it anymore. He can’t breathe around it, he can’t _think_ around it. The only thing he has to cling to is his own terror.

“Perhaps I should have, because god forbid you admit to having emotions to anyone, least of all to _me_. Too bad I already knew it, isn’t it? Just because you’re brilliant and weird and unconcerned with social convention doesn’t mean you’re a sociopath, Sherlock. Just because you feel everything so keenly it hurts doesn’t mean you get-- No, never mind. Fuck this. I’m not answering to you. Not this time.”

John stalks out of the room, trying to calm himself enough that he won’t do something drastic. Sherlock, who never quite learned how to deal with any of this sort of thing, follows him into the lounge. He’s powerless to do otherwise, sucked along in John’s wake, in the riptide of anger.

“How much is real, John?” he blurts. “Did you make me fascinated with you?”

At this, John goes truly incandescent with rage. Nothing has gotten through to his truly epically stupid flatmate, clearly. And Sherlock only knows something is coming for a split second before it hits him.

When Sherlock opens his eyes, he’s on his knees, hunched over with his arms wrapped tight around his head. He’s still crying, clawing his way free of the remnants of the pain he’d felt that night at the pool, the crippling despair and the fear that he’d be left behind that he’d lose John that he'd already lost John, that nothing would ever be ok again, all of which John had forced on him, given back to him because he hadn’t remembered any of it after the first time. His sight is grey around the edges, his leg screaming at him, his ribs are aching and helpless keening noises escape his raw throat in reminder of what had happened at the pool.

John is crying too, though he doesn’t seem to realize it. He’s shaking, tremors making it difficult to remain standing. “Right,” he says, voice barely a whisper, not looking at Sherlock. “Right.” He leaves Sherlock kneeling by his armchair and leaves, grabbing coat and scarf on the way out, shutting the door softly behind him, and fleeing.

Sherlock wonders if he’s just destroyed the only real friendship he’d ever had. He’s never realized how important having John as his friend has become to him. This doesn’t help with the crying.

\----------

John flees, blind to his surroundings, blind to everything but all the emotion swirling through the city like the tides of the Thames. He’s too far gone in his own anger to be able to erect any sort of barrier against his peculiarities, his normal shields have been in tatters since the pool and taking care of Sherlock hasn’t left him any time to work on them, especially since he’d discovered there wasn’t a way to block Sherlock out.

Every time he accidentally brushes against someone or is jostled on the sidewalk he gets another jolt of some random person’s life until his head hurts so much he can barely see.

Whenever he catches sight of a CCTV camera (which is often), he glares and flips it off. Their eyes follow him wherever he goes, until he finally stumbles into the park and collapses under a tree.

\----------

Sherlock eventually manages to crawl into John’s armchair. He cries himself to sleep, too raw and exhausted to do anything but despair of ever seeing his John again.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it. :)

His limp is back in the worst way, his shoulder aches and it hurts to breathe (he’s not sure if the last is because of the walloping his ribs had taken or because he’s been sitting under a tree in the park for most of the afternoon sobbing other people’s despair. He hasn’t been this incapable of filtering since he was very, very young).

Of course, this is about the time when Mycroft shows up, the long black car gliding to a halt beside him as he limps oh so slowly in the general direction of Baker Street--because where else does he have to go? John climbs into the back across from Mycroft and glares, even though sitting in the warmth makes him want to purr in relief.

Mycroft doesn’t sound smug when he says “I told you he wouldn’t appreciate feeling manipulated, John.” He just sounds sad.

John shrugs. “And I told you to fuck off, Mycroft. What do you want?”

“Merely to give you a ride home, perhaps a few minutes to gather yourself. You’ve been rather distraught this afternoon, John, did you notice you cleared out almost the whole southern half of Regent’s Park? I’ve had reports that even the lake has cleared.” Mycroft pauses, gives John a look of disappointment at his lack of control, and then gets to the real point. “If you desire to move out of your current premises I can make a few discreet inquiries on your behalf. I assure you that you could be very useful, and would be well-compensated for your work.”

“Really, Mycroft?” John sighs. “Are you trying to bribe me out of Sherlock’s life or recruit me?”

“You just had what I believe you would refer to as ‘the mother of all rows’ with Sherlock, John; most people would never look back.”

John grits his teeth. “I’m not most people, Mycroft.”

“No, you really aren’t, are you? Well, keep it in mind. My brother isn’t particularly forgiving.”

“I really don’t think you give him enough credit sometimes.”

John spends the rest of the relatively short ride staring out the window. Mycroft doesn’t speak again until they’re pulling up outside Baker Street.

“One other thing, John. My assistant tells me that, other than tolling like Big Ben and felling her for hours with a reaction migraine, that beacon-thought of yours the night of the Incident sounded like both yourself and Sherlock. Can you explain why such a thing would happen?”

John looks Mycroft dead in the eye and lies through his teeth. “I have no idea what you’re even talking about, Mycroft.”

\----------

The flat is totally dark, but John can hear Sherlock breathing. So John turns on the light and sees his flatmate curled up in John’s armchair. He doesn’t move at John’s presence, doesn’t seem to react at all, but John can feel the tension coiling through him.

John remembers the layers of comfort and love and healing that he’d woven together and laid over Sherlock in the hospital. He puts together a remnant of that and spreads it over Sherlock’s shoulders, the only peace offering he can manage right now. Then he crosses the room and kneels in front of the armchair. First he grabs Sherlock’s ankles, gently, and lowers them to the floor. Sherlock seems to collapse in on himself, head lolling and shoulders hunched and breath starting to hitch. His eyes are squeezed shut, if-I-can’t-see-you-you-can’t-see-me.

“Shhhh,” John gentles him as he grabs Sherlock’s forearms and hauls him to his feet. “You shouldn’t sleep all curled up like that, time for bed.”

Sherlock is still terrified and angry and confused as hell. John is still angry and confused and hurt at Sherlock’s terror. He figures they’re a pair. He drapes Sherlock’s good arm around his shoulders, and guides the younger man to his bed, tucks him in, tucks the peace offering tighter around his shoulders, and leaves him to sleep.

Drowsily, too emotionally drained to dredge up more than the echoes of what he knows he’s feeling, Sherlock remembers waking up in hospital with nearly the same thick sense of comfort sitting over him and knows that John hasn’t really ever manipulated his emotions and certainly didn’t make Sherlock fascinated with him.

\----------

John starts out of a different nightmare than usual with Sherlock looming over him.

“You really shouldn’t be sleeping in an armchair either, John,” he says, voice low and hoarse from sleep and earlier stressors on his vocal chords. “Even though it does make waking you from your awful nightmares easier. Is this going to continue to be a regular occurrence, these nightmares?”

John shrugs, tries to still the trembling of his limbs. This one had been different; Sherlock had died in his arms covered in blood and shattered ceramic tiles, and his corpse had laughed, a hollow and devastating sound, at John for trying to save him, for trying to be his _friend_. “I don’t know. Could ask you the same thing.”

Sherlock tugs at John until he stands, and then wraps him in a hug. John isn’t sure if this is for his benefit or Sherlock’s.

“Mad at you,” John murmurs, muffled against Sherlock’s t-shirt.

Sherlock chuckles. “Good. Mad at you too. Bed?”

John nods against the taller man’s chest. “Will have to talk. Morning.”

\----------

John stares at the ceiling of Sherlock’s room. “Your bed really isn’t all that comfortable,” he observes. He still isn’t quite sure how he’s ended up sharing Sherlock’s bed essentially every night since they were released from hospital (and most of the time there as well if he’s being totally honest). Well, that’s not entirely true. Most of the time he starts out in his own bed, until he wakes or is woken by Sherlock in the midst of another nightmare, after which he crawls into bed with this flatmate for the nearness, the comfort and ok fine the cuddling too. It's been days and they haven't spoken about what John did yet; Sherlock has spent most of the time silent and brooding, and John still blames himself enough that he hasn't pushed.

“Stairs, John.”

John makes a non-committal sound, folds his arms so that his hands are under his head, despite the twinges in his bad shoulder. He continues to stare at the ceiling. Sherlock turns over and flops until his head is on John’s chest. This isn’t an unusual occurrence; John seems to be his favorite pillow.

“Sherlock?”

“Hm?”

“Do you want me to move out?”

The sharp starburst of panic that washes through first Sherlock and then John and nearly sweeps back before John ruthlessly shuts down the loop is answer enough. Sherlock’s arms snake around John and squeeze in further confirmation of how bad that notion is, but he lifts his head to look at John, who is steadfastly staring at the ceiling.

“I was just checking. You’re afraid of me, after all.”

Sherlock puts his head back on John’s chest, listening to his pounding heart. Sherlock’s is pounding just as hard ( _panic, adrenaline, increased heart rate_ ). His hands clench in John’s t-shirt.

“No.”

“No? I’m pretty sure I can tell when someone’s terrified of me, Sherlock. It’s happened before.”

John’s been hurt before, when someone found out he was empathic. Sherlock desperately wishes he could skin that horrendously evil person alive.

John chuckles. “I appreciate that, I think.”

“I’m not terrified of you, John.”  “Then what?”

“I’m afraid of what you’ll find out about me. And then you’ll leave.” Sherlock huffs.

“I’m still here, aren’t I? And at this point, between your bloody still-waters bollocks and the clairsentience I’m pretty sure I know the gist of it. And the same could be said of you about me. You’re still here.”

“It’s my flat.”

“It’s our flat, and don’t change the subject. We’re having this conversation. I will leave if you want me to, but for now at least you’re stuck with an empath for a flatmate. I don’t know why you can read my emotions--”

“You’re lying, John.”

John sighs, licks his lips. “Not entirely. It shouldn’t have happened, either way.”

“John, tell me what you did to me. Please.”

“I can’t explain it.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s impossible!”   
“Obviously not, John, as you have done it. Improbable is a more precise term, I should think.”

John thinks for a minute, resigns himself. “I could probably show you. But it will... hurt. A lot.”

“It was at the pool?”

“You were going insane and fast, Sherlock. I had to do something to help you and I wasn’t precisely thinking straight myself. Hell, I had to let your bloody brother know I’m an empath to get us found and believe me when I say that isn’t a decision I made lightly.”

Sherlock sits up and looks down at John. “Do it. Show me.”

John sighs again. It’s his resigned sigh, his fine-I’ll-do-this-but-only-because-you-actually-said-please-Sherlock sigh (even though Sherlock didn’t actually say please this time). “Lay back down; it’ll be easier to transfer if you’re prone.”

“Supine, actually.” 

“Shut up, Sherlock. Stop looking like you’re about to run a particularly gruesome experiment; trust me, you aren’t going to like this.”

John sits up and then kneels next to his friend. His best friend. _God this is a terrible idea._ Slowly, he starts rebuilding the entire night in his head. When he’s got it all together, the pool the bomb Moriarty Sherlock the blood the screaming the begging his sopping wet cardigan his broken wrist his thought tolling like Big Ben the relief the panic the grey pain the strange urge to giggle about it all (now, anyway) the black chopper the drugs the doctors the worry, he grabs Sherlock’s head just like he did before and leans over, pressing their foreheads together, just like he did before, and lets the empathy and his less nameable peculiarity do the rest.

Sherlock chokes on a sob, but only once. It’s over in moments; John leans back and lets go of Sherlock’s head. There are tears leaking out of Sherlock’s tightly shut eyes, and he’s all a jumble inside. John isn’t any better, though. So he gets up and leaves.

John trudges into the kitchen and sets the kettle on. He gets the tea out of the cupboard, and two cups; even if Sherlock doesn’t want tea, he could really do with a cuppa right now, if John’s any judge and really, who better to judge Sherlock’s needs than John?

Sherlock limps in a few minutes later. His limp is worse than usual. His eyes are red-rimmed and his color is higher than usual. Sherlock, it seems, is not an ugly cryer. Not fair.

“I take it back, John,” he croaks. “I am terrified of you.” Sherlock leans against the worktop.

“I couldn’t do it again, Sherlock. The circumstances were extenuating. I don’t even think I could’ve done it had you been fully unconscious, I don’t know. I don’t have any idea how I did that.”

“You scooped me out of my own head and kept me. For a week.”

“Well, it sounds weird when you say it like that.”

“You wouldn’t do it again even if you could, would you?”

John looks up at his best mate. “Sherlock, I’m pretty sure I’d rather kill us both than do that again.”

Sherlock nods, a speculative look that John doesn’t like on his face. This isn’t going to be the end of that, no matter how little explanation John can provide. For the first time in years, John wishes desperately that his Gran were around; she’d always known more about the way things work than he did, and she hadn’t finished teaching him before she died. Not to mention the huge amount of amusement she'd get out of Sherlock.

“Go on, sit down, I’ll bring the tea out in a few. Your leg must be killing you right now.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Your limp is worse. And I can feel it.”

Sherlock retreats to the lounge. He spends most of the day playing his violin. He cycles through most of what he knows and through mindless screeching and through pop songs he's only heard in passing and through improvising things that make John want to cry. John spends most of the day with the telly on but muted, or reading a thriller, or just sitting staring out the window listening to Sherlock play. He spends all of the day waiting for Sherlock to work through his thought process, waiting for him to process what’s going on and to acquiesce to learning how to deal with his new connection to John and to stop fighting it. He spends all of the day waiting for Sherlock to forgive him.

That doesn’t happen until much later than John had hoped it would. He’s glad when it does though, and he stands to go to bed.

Sherlock turns from where he’s playing by the fireplace and looks at John. “Mine or yours?”

“What?”

“Are you going to my bed or yours, John?”

“What?”

Sherlock gives him one of those why-are-you-so-obtuse looks. “I do believe that if you sleep in my room I can soothe your nightmares without being forced to wake you to comfort you.”

“Is that why you’ve been doing that?”

“Yes. It’s not entirely selfish, although I must admit I find your nightmares extremely disturbing.” Sherlock suppresses a shudder.

“Sherlock--” John stops, shuts his mouth, opens it, closes it again, and then continues, “you realize how far outside of normal social parameters this is?”

Sherlock shrugs, raises his violin back to his shoulder. “Social parameters are boring. This is mutually beneficial.”

“Well. Uh.” John’s turn to shrug. “Can’t argue with that if it helps me sleep better.”

Sherlock starts to play. “I’ll be in shortly.”

\----------

Sherlock is inordinately pleased with himself. John looks down at him as the smile that no one else gets to see, Sherlock’s real smile (shy and hesitant and belonging to the little boy he used to be) spreads across his face.

“You didn’t wake up. I did it.”

John grabs the pillow he’d just vacated and hits Sherlock in the face with it. “Ta, you smug bastard.” But he makes sure Sherlock feels his gratitude before he gets up and goes to make the tea.

 

(The end, for now.)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [I See You Through podfic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/562784) by [OtterPods (LapOtter)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LapOtter/pseuds/OtterPods)
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